Royal Albert Hall reported to the Attorney General over ticket sales

Charity Commission takes unprecedented step over trustees’ ability to sell seats for events at inflated prices

THE ROYAL Albert Hall has been reported to the Attorney General by the charity regulator in a row over its trustees’ ability to own seats privately and sell tickets for them at marked-up prices, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The hall has been formally referred to Jeremy Wright, Britain’s top law officer, by the Charity Commission in an escalation of a long-running row over how the 150-year-old hall is run.

It comes as the Royal Albert Hall prepares to stage the Last Night of the Proms this evening, the biggest date in its calendar.

The commission has previously expressed concern at the “scale of commercialisation in the private sale of tickets” and wants Mr Wright to appoint a judge-led tribunal to examine the hall’s 19th century constitution, which allows trustees to own seats, profit from ticket sales and at the same time control the charity’s board that runs the hall.

The intervention is the first time in the commission’s history that it has referred a charity to the tribunal.

Members of the public who helped fund the hall’s construction in the 1860s were given the right to seats which could be handed down generations, or traded on the open market.

While tickets can be sold on through the hall’s box office at face value, the seats’ owners are also free to sell them very profitably on the open market. Around a quarter – 1,275 – of the 5,000 seats at the charity-run hall are owned in this way.

Part of the commission’s concern is that 19 out of the hall’s 25 trustees are seat owners, meaning that they can influence which events are open to private ticket sales. The hall had offered to spend thousands of pounds of charitable funds on parliamentary lawyers to change its constitution and address the commission’s concerns.

However, The Daily Telegraph can disclose the commission has told the hall it cannot spend the funds in this way because the proposals do not address “the central issue” and were not in the interests of the charity.

A spokesman for the Charity Commission told The Daily Telegraph: “The perception that charity trustees are in a position to benefit financially from their role is very damaging.

“We have been engaged with the charity for a number of years to address concerns about the charity’s governance, yet the trustees have been unwilling to deal with a number of the central issues to our satisfaction in a timely manner.

“Having considered the matter carefully, we have now refused permission for the hall to spend charitable funds to promote a parliamentary bill to implement

‘The perception that charity trustees are in a position to benefit financially from the role is very damaging’

its governance review as we do not believe this to be in the best interests of the charity. Further, because of the lack of progress addressing the central issue, along with its complexity, we have taken the unprecedented step of seeking the consent of the Attorney General to refer a number of questions to the Charity Tribunal relating to the charity and the exercise of the commission’s regulatory powers.”

A spokesman for the Royal Albert Hall said: “We are surprised that details of an alleged communication from the commission to the Attorney General are, apparently, being leaked to the Press. The hall from its side does not wish for the primary channel of its discussions with the Charity Commission to be through the Press and so has no further comment.”